OPINION: The Olympic Games are once again at a crossroads.
They're due to be held in Japan in just 70 days - that's just 10 weeks away.
Thirty-billion dollars have or will be spent on hosting them, and from everything I have read or heard, I get the feeling these Olympics are going ahead, come COVID hell or COVID high water.
That's because it's huge business and in the words of that great cliché from the global financial crisis, the Olympics are "to big to fail".
You see, while we were all shocked at the very idea of Olympics without live crowds, that's not how the Games work.
It's all about TV rights and commerce - this is the way the Olympic movement makes money.
Except the Olympic movement has suddenly had to stop. International Olympic Committee boss Thomas Bach has been forced to cancel his whistle-stop, symbolic tour of Japan - because it's unsafe.
There's a national state of emergency, with 7000 new cases each day, and 60 percent of the country wants the Games called off.
The vaccine doesn't provide much hope either, with just two percent of the 126 million population vaccinated.
But the Games seem just too big to stop and those close to the event say this is the big dance - in fact, the only dance - for so many sports. They will put up with anything to be there.
These sports need them to go ahead.
As for safety, the Olympics were doing bubbles well before any of us had ever heard of the concept.
An Olympic bubble is easily on par with airline and border security, so the IOC is well practised in keeping the right people in and the wrong people out.
If anyone can do it, they can.
And don't forget Japanese pride.
With China hosting the Winter Olympics next year, cancelling now would be a Japanese embarrassment far too big to bear.
This is on and it's happening now. It might be stupid and completely naive, but I get the feeling the Olympics are just too big to fail and far too powerful to stop.
Duncan Garner is host of The AM Show
